Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

I shook my head at her ignorance of history. She wasn’t born on Earth, though, and lacked any extant relatives who’d been alive when Russia had actually been a thing.

  “We have saber-tooth tigers on our planet,” Victor commented with his usual “what-kind-of-a-wimp-are-you” tone.

  “We have dangerous animals on Hermes, too,” Bobbi returned in a biting tone, “but the damned things evolved there, we didn’t clone them in a tube and set them loose on purpose.”

  “Let’s cut down on the chatter,” I said, trying to keep the grin out of my tone. “We’re only five or six kilometers out and I don’t know how sensitive their security systems are.”

  The next hour passed in silence except for the chuff of the mules’ footpads into the snow and the soft crunch as they pulled out, and sometimes the skitter of a marten or a squirrel or the flutter of wings. The trees grew thicker and the trail grew steeper and narrower, switching back around hills and descending into gullies, but the mules stayed as steady as their namesakes, disregarding the precarious path just as they disregarded the chill wind that whipped at us and the occasional flurry of snow.

  I was letting the mule’s obstacle navigation programming do most of the driving while I watched the dead reckoning map projected in my helmet HUD, with the location of the Sungs’ compound a green square provided for us by Koji, along with his best guess of where their security perimeter began. It was a hard, red line on the map, but my trust of its accuracy was a bit fuzzier and less well defined and I was mentally adding a few hundred meters to it. It didn’t seem like it was that far away, but the route we were taking wasn’t at all straightforward; not so much “as the crow flies” but more “as the mule walks through deep snow.” The primary was beginning to sink low in the sky by the time we reached the fork in the path and I raised a fist to call our column to a halt.

  The game trail had levelled out a kilometer or so back, as we travelled onto a plateau, and widened out slightly where it split into two tracks, one going straight and the other heading off to the left. The snow was thinner up here as well, barely four or five centimeters deep and melted off the trees. Otherwise, this stretch of ground didn’t look at all different from the last few kilometers. There was nothing visible but the unending forest that blocked out the sky with a standing wave of shadowed green.

  Bobbi brought her and Sanders’ mount up next to mine and I leaned over to touch helmets with her, avoiding using any EM signals this close to the compound.

  “Give me an hour to get there,” I said. “And another hour to get in to talk to them. After that, use your best judgement.”

  “Be careful, Boss,” she said. This close, I could just see her eyes through the visor, and they looked worried. “Don’t make me have to explain to Sophia why I let you get killed.”

  I didn’t respond to that, just unsnapped my Gauss rifle from its sling and handed it to her, then stripped off my tactical vest with its spare magazines and passed it to Sanders. I kept my pistol; they’d be suspicious if I came all this way unarmed. Then I sat there and watched as Bobbi led the others down the side trail, waving back to Victor and Kurt bringing up the rear.

  I stayed in place until they’d disappeared into the gloom of the forest and I couldn’t make out the crash of their mules’ footpads. Then I dragged the throttle bar on the mule’s control display upward and it surged forward again at a jarring trot. I passed right through the area where I estimated that the Sung Brothers would have their security sensors, kept going at a steady, lumbering pace even when the trail intersected the main road. The road had been cleared by locally-fabricated tractors and graded not that long ago; it was broad and fairly smooth, and bordered by a cleared area of land a few meters deep on either side.

  I could see the glow of the compound’s lights in the darkening twilight, and I still pressed on, startling a doe feeding at the edge of the forest and sending it bounding away. It wasn’t until the massive, stone walls of the building itself loomed above the surrounding trees that I heard the vehicle approaching. It roared up the road toward me on thick, knobbed tires, its alcohol-fueled engine rumbling and coughing. It had started out life as a heavy cargo hauler, but armor had been fitted around it like a carapace, and gun turrets peaked out from behind thick, metal shielding at the front and back.

  I killed the power to the mule and climbed down, unfastening my helmet and tucking it in the cargo netting that hung alongside the saddle. Then I put up my hands and waited until the armored truck had ground to a halt only meters away, its headlights flaring painfully into my eyes. I squeezed them to slits and tried not to look away, glancing side to side so I could catch the movement when a half a dozen troopers piled out of the back and formed a semicircle around me.

  They weren’t soldiers, not even contractors; they were the hired guns of a crime syndicate and you could see it in their mismatched gear and their lack of discipline. They were careful not to get in the way of each other’s field of fire, though, I’ll give them that.

  “Get on your knees!” One of them was yelling at me, a younger man with a sharply pointed beard colored various shades of purple. He jerked the muzzle of his rocket carbine downward with every word, as if to illustrate where I should go. “Get on your knees right now!”

  “Don’t fucking move!” The tall woman in the armored vest standing next to Purple Beard ordered. “If you move, I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

  “You two need to make up your minds,” I said casually. “Do you want me to get on my knees or do you not want me to move?”

  “Both of you shut the hell up,” an older, commanding voice cut through their blathering.

  The man who stepped forward out of the cab of the vehicle wasn’t much to look at, short and wiry with close-cropped, curly hair. But he had an air of competence to him that the others didn’t, and he was obviously their leader. He stopped about two meters in front of me and looked me over carefully, holding a pulse carbine across his chest at low port. He didn’t point his weapon my way, but he didn’t take his hand off of it, either.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” He asked in his no-bullshit tone, seeming more curious than afraid or angry.

  “My name’s Randall Munroe. I work as a trouble-shooter for Andre Damiani, Director of the Executive Board of the Corporate Council.” I saw the recognition in his eye, saw the curiosity intensifying. “I’ve been sent to Peboan because Monsieur Damiani is deeply interested in buying something your employers are trying to sell.” I shrugged expressively. “They’ve proven difficult to reach, lately, so I thought a more direct approach might work.”

  He regarded me for a moment, wheels turning behind his eyes as he considered whether or not he could believe me. Then he nodded slightly, almost to himself.

  “Lyria,” he said to the high-strung female who’d commanded me not to move. “Take his gun, and that combat knife.”

  I felt her hands stripping the weapons away from me, but I kept my eyes on the leader and my hands in the air.

  “All right, Mr. Munroe,” he said once I was disarmed, “you can put your hands down now. My name’s Caesar. If you would board the vehicle,” he waved at the open passenger’s side door, “I’ll take you up to the house and ask the Sung Brothers if they’d like to speak with you.”

  I felt a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding slowly hiss out of me. At least they hadn’t just shot me outright, which had seemed like a distinct possibility.

  Don’t get too confident, I reminded myself, climbing up the metal steps into the cab. The seat was cushioned with what looked like real leather, though the rest of the interior was utilitarian plastic and metal. The driver stared at me with suspicion, and I could see the gleam of the instrument panel reflecting off his bald head.

  The day’s not over yet.

  Chapter Ten

  The Sung Brothers’ mansion was a combination of superior architectural taste and incipient paranoia. The house itself reminded me of one of Mother’s old country homes t
hat she rarely visited, constructed from stone and local wood, undoubtedly at great expense. The stone was slate-grey under a roof of darker shingles and the building itself must have covered a quarter of a hectare, sprawling in single-story wings before it rose to the summit of the main building, towering over the surrounding trees.

  The paranoia came from the wall. It wasn’t just a fence, it was a full-scale palisade three meters tall, built from stone reinforced by steel and capped at each corner by guard towers with heavy Gatling lasers. It probably took as long to build as the house itself and I wondered which had cost more. You’d think they expected a rampaging horde to come storming out of the forest…or maybe a flight of assault shuttles to come in on a strafing run.

  Darkness was creeping across the sky from horizon to horizon and the lights on the wall were winking on in response even as the armored truck passed through the gate. The guards in the gate house waved at the driver and he nodded in return. I didn’t get the sense that any of them were ex-military, at least not recently; they all had the ragged-edge look of outlaws, men and women who weren’t afraid to use a gun and weren’t particular who they used it for.

  Who am I to talk, though?

  I’d told myself for the last three years that I was only going along with being Andre Damiani’s trigger-man until I could find a way to fight back, get out from under all this. But it didn’t feel as if I were any closer to that now than I had been that first day Cowboy had shown up on Demeter to collect my end of the bargain that had kept me out of my mother’s suffocating grasp.

  I shook those thoughts away, forcing myself to concentrate on the here-and-now. The armored truck pulled up in front of a paved walkway leading up to the huge, wooden double doors at the front of the mansion and Caesar pushed out of the passenger’s side, waving for me to follow. There was a guard at the front, a tall, slender woman who probably came from a lower-gravity world. She pulled one of the doors open with an old-fashioned brass knob and held it while Caesar and I passed through, followed by two more of his people.

  The entrance hall was decorated with tasteful, locally-made artwork, original stuff not just copies of the classic Earth paintings and sculptures. It was a bit too busy for my tastes and I knew Mother would have turned up her nose at it in disgust, but it was evidence for a real effort at showing an interest in art rather than just showing other people you could afford art.

  Caesar waved me over to a padded chair in the sitting room just through the entrance hall, and gestured for me to wait.

  “Watch him,” he told Purple Beard and the high-strung woman, then strode off purposefully, jogging up the polished wooden staircase that curved around the outer wall of the sitting room.

  And watch me they did, like I was some eldritch creature who would disappear between eyeblinks, but I did my best to ignore them. These people, I decided with a hint of disdain that reminded me of Gramps, were amateurs. I still had three weapons left on me, concealed in my armor, and they hadn’t yet found one of them. They had all these weapons, all these goons, but not a single MRI scanner? We had better security at the Amity Police Station back on Demeter.

  When Caesar returned, he was trailed by two men, Asians by appearance, if they’d been born that way, and likewise identical twins with the same caveat. They didn’t have a single dark hair out of place between them, and shared a look of agelessness that could have been the gifts of good genes, the gifts of rich parents or the work of restruct surgeons. Their faces were narrow but not sharp-edged, their eyes darkly intelligent with what I thought was a spark of humor behind them, something you didn’t usually find in a crime boss. They were also dressed alike, in loose, belted tunics and matching plaid kilts, which was something you didn’t see every day.

  “You wished to speak with us,” the one on the left said, his voice harsh and choppy and slightly high-pitched. He stood with his arms crossed, and his brother matched his stance exactly.

  “Yes,” I said, coming to my feet. “I’m Randall Munroe…”

  “Yes, yes, we know who you are,” the brother doing the talking made a “move-along” gesture impatiently. “If we didn’t, you’d be dead already. We grant you this audience as a sign of respect for Monsieur Damiani. Now say your piece, for we have business to attend to.”

  Okay, to hell with the niceties, then.

  “The situation here is untenable, gentlemen,” I said bluntly. “You’re basically at war and no business is getting done. My employer is unhappy.” I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not too happy myself. Innocent civilians are being slaughtered in the cross-fire between the bratva Skingangers and these mercenaries you’ve brought in. You need to reach a peaceful accommodation with Alexi.”

  “What does your employer care about civilians, innocent or otherwise?” The Sung Brother’s tone was scornful, the look on his face skeptical. “And why should we?”

  “Because when the Patrol and the military hear about it,” I replied, “Savage/Slaughter is going to have to withdraw their troops or they’ll lose their charter. You’re going to be outgunned against the Skingangers, and they’re not even your real enemy.”

  “We have millions of dollars’ worth of stolen weapons that say otherwise.”

  “The Skingangers didn’t steal your off-world weapons caches.” I paused, looking into those dark eyes and wondering just how frank I should be. “Tell me something, do you know where Captain Marquette is?”

  That rattled them both, though they tried not to show it. At least they didn’t try to deny it.

  “Not currently,” he said smoothly, covering his discomfort well. “I suppose it would be fruitless and pointless to wonder how you came to find out about him.”

  “You don’t think that a man like Monsieur Damiani keeps an ear to the ground for reports of such things?” I asked him, cocking my head to the side like he’d said something incredibly stupid. “You don’t think he understands the destabilizing effects things such as this could have?”

  “Perhaps,” Sung interjected, eyes narrowing, “he wishes to make an offer himself for the items Captain Marquette has to sell?”

  “Of course.” I smiled thinly, without any sort of good feeling behind it. “His offer is your continued existence both as a business concern and as living, breathing human beings. For this consideration, he wants everything you have, including Captain Marquette’s whereabouts.”

  The two men looked at each other, real fear sparking behind their eyes, but also anger.

  “Surely he can’t expect us to give up the chance to broker such a deal with no remuneration!” There was much righteous indignation behind the words, and also much bluster. “We’ve lost a good deal of money to the bratva with their Skinganger thugs and their pirates raiding our storage dumps…”

  “I told you,” I interrupted, “the bratva aren’t the ones who’ve been taking your weapons. They don’t have the resources either to do it themselves or to hire others. They’re being set up to take the blame to divert your attention.”

  “Forgive the intrusion.” The voice was deep and sonorous and almost hypnotically pleasant. It came from the head of the stairs, through the door the Sung Brothers had emerged out of earlier. “But I understood we have a visitor.”

  The man was, for want of a better word, perfect. His face reminded me of a Michelangelo sculpture come alive, with wavy, blond hair and eyes of a brilliant blue. He wore a loose robe that hung open across his chest, revealing almost absurdly large, corded muscles and skin tanned gold. Behind him, three more men and a woman filed out, each as deterministically perfect and beautiful as the last, like clones from the same donor.

  “Ah, umm…” The Sung who’d been speaking dithered for a moment, clearly not expecting the interruption. Even in the confusion and consternation, the other brother kept his silence. “Yes, your holiness. This is Randall Munroe, a representative of the Corporate Council…”

  Your holiness?

  The perfect man descended the stairs, hands folded inside the sle
eves of his robe, the smile on his face beatific.

  “Good evening, Mr. Munroe,” he said, that hypnotic quality making my brain want to quit working right. “I am Israfil, High Priest of the Temple of the Ancients on the world known to humans as Aphrodite. I bring you the blessings and greetings of our creators.”

  Son of a bitch. They were here already. He was with the Predecessor Cult.

  ***

  “Tell me, Mr. Munroe,” Israfil said, sipping at the fruity drink the servant had brought for him, “where are you from, originally?”

  I watched him carefully across the hand-carved wooden table, my eyes flitting back and forth between the Sung Brothers on either side of him like some mirror-image optical illusion. The upstairs dining room was huge and ornate, and the table was a good five meters long, yet here we were all crammed together at one end of it like a band of conspirators.

  Oh, I’d had more uncomfortable dinners, usually involving Mom and Gramps, and I’d certainly had worse ones. The bison fillet had been mouth-wateringly good, particularly given that I hadn’t eaten anything besides shipboard fare in weeks, and the vegetables had been fresh. But time was ticking away, and I was nagged with the unmistakable feeling that I was wasting it.

  “Trans-Angeles,” I responded after a moment. “Earth. Though I haven’t been back there in years.”

  “So rare to find someone out here from Earth.” He toasted me with his goblet, which was real glass, crystal at that. “It seems as though most people on Earth are content to stay right where they are, apart from the very rich and the desperately poor.”

  “You have to be pretty desperate to trade guaranteed housing, food, clothing and entertainment for military service,” I commented, not offering any personal details but saying what I thought he wanted to hear. “Especially in the middle of an interstellar war.”

  “And yet I did just that,” the High Priest told me, almost as if he thought I’d been discussing his life instead of my own. “I left the safety and familiarity of the only life anyone in my family had ever known to join the Space Fleet, to get away from the squalid, miserable existence of life in the London Council Housing. And thanks be to the Ancients that I did, or I would never have come to hear their call, the call to return to their ways, to the path of life and perfection.”